The artistic vision of the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory in Earth orbit. The telescope returned to work on October 21, 2018, 11 days after problems with the gyroscope
NASA's Chandra Radar Observatory coped with a glitch that brought it into safe mode 2 weeks ago. This bug occurred in a gyroscope that supports the orientation of the device. The problem occurred on October 10th. But members of the mission were able to establish a new configuration of the gyroscope, and Chandra resumed scientific operations on October 21.
The team has initiated many maneuvers to change the direction and orientation of the spacecraft and confirm that the gyroscopes are behaving as expected. During the week, scientists collect data to fine-tune the performance of the new gyroscope configuration. In the end, the engineers will update the software patch to apply any necessary settings for the onboard computer. Chandra has been studying heaven in X-ray since 1999, when he launched into Earth orbit aboard the space shuttle Columbia. Over the years, the device has made many important discoveries, helping astronomers observe the formation of giant clusters of galaxies and display the distribution of mysterious dark matter in space.
Chandra is one of four spacecraft launched from 1990-2003. as part of the NASA Big Observatory program. The other three are Hubble, Spitzer and Compton (CGRO). The failure of the gyroscope led to the Compton mission ending 9 years later in 2000. Recently, problems have happened to Hubble, although it is expected that he will return to the usual scientific research.
